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International business major Maria Montoya-Chang 鈥�26 and economics professors Anca Voicu and Martina Vidovic will present their paper titled, 鈥淒oes Female Leadership Shape Bank Risk and Profitability? Empirical Evidence from the Top 75 U.S. Commercial Banks鈥� at the Business and Economics Society International Conference in Innsbruck, Austria, later this month. The presentation marks the launch of the Women in Finance Program Research Paper Series as the first student-faculty research paper to be presented at an international academic conference.

The conference brings together business and economics scholars and practitioners to explore the challenges and opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution and an increasingly global economy. It fosters discussion, collaboration, and research on emerging issues shaping business, economics, education, and public policy.

The team鈥檚 research examines the effect of women鈥檚 participation on the board of directors and in executive positions on the risk exposure and financial performance of the top 75 U.S. commercial banks from 2000 to 2024. Prior research on this topic has largely focused on non-U.S. markets, making the United States an important and under-explored region. The group investigates how gender diversity at the leadership level shapes key banking outcomes across a range of performance and risk indicators.

The findings reveal that U.S. commercial banks with a greater proportion of women in executive roles exhibit higher capital adequacy, suggesting a more risk-conscious approach to asset management. At the same time, women-led banks demonstrate superior profitability, reporting higher return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) relative to their male-dominated counterparts. Additionally, banks with greater female board representation show higher market-to-book ratios, signaling greater investor confidence in long-term value creation.

These results contribute to the growing body of evidence on the relationship between board gender diversity and financial decision-making in the banking sector. Serving as a direct comparative counterpart to the Southeast Asian evidence of Bouteska and Mili (2022), this study extends the gender-diversity-in-banking discourse into the distinct regulatory, governance, and market environment of the United States. Specifically, the findings highlight a nuanced dynamic in U.S. commercial banking: Female leadership is associated with more prudent risk management and stronger profitability outcomes, suggesting that gender diversity does not impose a trade-off between stability and performance. Rather, banks among the top 50 in the United States that embrace women in senior leadership positions tend to be simultaneously more financially resilient and more profitable than those with less gender-diverse leadership structures. These insights carry important implications for regulators, corporate governance frameworks, and stakeholder policy in the U.S. financial sector.